Digital Magazines, 2008 - Supplement to Folio - (Page 14)

14 ome publishers enhance their digital editions in all sorts of ways; others don’t do much beyond delivering a replica of the print edition—usually including live links to advertiser Web sites. It really depends on the publisher’s resources and the appetite of the publication’s advertisers for engaging the reader. Options for publishers vary from vendor to vendor, but most offer the ability to attach or embed audio and video. “We’re seeing a strong increase in the use of video,” says Marcus Grimm, marketing director at Nxtbook Media, and that’s the experience of other vendors as well. About 25 percent of Zinio’s clients, for example, are incorporating ﬂash, audio, and/or video to bring their editorial to life and offer rich media to advertisers, including digital blow-in cards and bellybands. In Texterity’s “Proﬁle of the Digital Magazine Reader 2007,” for example, more than 61 percent of respondents said they value video clips as a useful rich media add-on to digital magazines (see chart, right). “In the past year,” Dan Woods Grimm continues, “more Associate Publisher, publishers have come up O’Reilly Media with good RSS strategies, so we’re also incorporating more RSS feeds into their content. I expect to see tighter integration of RSS.” Search capability, whether just the single issue or all archived digital content, is a useful and popular feature. Each subscriber to ALM’s digital publications, for example, builds a searchable archive starting with the ﬁrst issue that they receive. “Some American Lawyer subscribers have years of issues in their archives,” notes Shane Molloy, director of circulation. And zoom is an important (and sometimes necessary option) due to fonts and screen sizes vis-à-vis the print version’s layout. Reed Business Information, which pub- The Art of Enhancement: Digital Magazines 2.0 DIGITAL FEATURES AND TOOLS BECOME INCREASINGLY COMPELLING. S lishes about 50 digital editions, has ate magazine page, non-subspent a great deal of time trying to scribers may view three pages ﬁgure out ways to ease the navigaforward and three pages back tion and legibility of digital editions, from the landing page. The both editorial and advertising conlast page offers an opportunity tent, according to John Blanchard, to subscribe. The technology VP of operations. “We’re particularly identiﬁes subscribers who, Graham Kilshaw of course, have no limitations focused on type and point size in orITEM Publishing der to eliminate the need for zoom with regard to access. and pan features.” On the other hand, a re“That technology is no longer comcent survey of Playboy digital edition readers pletely unique to our magazines,” says Dan indicated—perhaps not surprisingly—that Woods, associate publisher, “but, working zoom was their favorite feature! with Texterity, we were the ﬁrst company to have it. We get a lot of exposure for the PARTNERING WITH VENDORS magazines that way. In fact, it’s rather pheON FEATURE DEVELOPMENT nomenal. It gets prospects involved and As digital delivery continues to emerge, gives them enough information to whet vendors appear willing to collaborate on their appetite. If we can reach them with a feature development with publishers that relevant article at that point in time, that’s a come up with or need something new. good marketing tool for us.” O’Reilly Media, for example, uses digital Similarly, ITEM Publishing worked with editions as an online circulation tool, and Nxtbook to devise a lead-generation tool for approached Texterity about developing a advertisers in the digital edition of its Inter- Over 61 percent of digital readers value video content as a useful “rich media” add-on to digital magazines. Source: Texterity “Profile of the Digital Magazine Reader” 2007 Do you value “rich media” enhancements to the digital magazine content? way to open the digital magazines up to Web searchers. Texterity spent about six months developing the capability, which O’Reilly funded, and another six months testing it. As a result, O’Reilly’s digital magazines appear in search results for a particular reference. And when the searcher clicks on one of those results and lands at the appropriference Technology. Called HooClix, it’s now available to other Nxtbook clients as well. Basically, when a subscriber logs into the magazine online or links through e-mail, the e-mail address becomes a cookie. “We track the person’s activity in terms of ad pages continued on page 16 Special Supplement to FOLIO: and Circulation Management

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Digital Magazines, 2008 - Supplement to Folio

Digital Magazines, 2008 - Supplement to Folio The State of Digital Magazine Delivery, 2008 Printers Extend Their Services to Digital Key ABC and BPA Audit Rules for Digital Editions What Drives Publishers to Use, and Readers to Read, Digital Magazines? The Art of Enhancement: Digital Magazines 2.0 Spin Reaches Out to Young Readers What About E-Paper? And Mobile Delivery? With Growth Comes Many Competitors Digital-Only Magazines Offer a New Strategy for Former Print Titles Going All-Digital Spawns a New Business Approach

Digital Magazines, 2008 - Supplement to Folio

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